I am Red. I am a Survivor. This is my journey.

Today is a good day.

Joe & I ventured off to my scans bright and early today. I haven’t done full scans (neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis) at a local imaging center before because I also usually have a bone scan, which has to be done at a hospital imaging location. I must usually wear leggings too because when I arrived in jeans today, I was asked to change into scrubs to eliminate the metal button on my jeans. These pants had me cracking up! They had a rather large expandable waistband that tied at the waist and the legs were loose. The pants were actually super comfortable and I could totally sport them. These pictures had me cracking up though – I look so silly! The pants created a good laugh at the start of this long day.

The scans themselves were uneventful. For CT scans, I typically receive them with and without contrast. This means that I often have to drink a combination of water and contrast 2 hours ahead of time, they do a scan without contrast and then they inject contrast into my veins and scan again. When I go to the hospital, I have to arrive 2 hours early and drink the contrast on site then wait the 2 hours. They typically try and schedule the bone scan, which requires its own separate injection, during this time. I just recently learned that when I go to the hospital, I can have the script (for scans) written to have my port accessed. Since I went to a local imaging center today, I had to pick up the contrast last week so I could drink it at home prior to my appointment today. Much more convenient! They don’t have a registered nurse onsite so they had to access my veins for the injection instead of my port. I find it interesting that they wouldn’t train the technicians to access ports. It’s much more convenient, in my opinion.

I asked to ensure the scans were read STAT and my doctor had the results within an hour. Off I went to my appointment there next. I saw the Nurse Practitioner today. There was a rather long wait, which I debated spending on the exam table taking a nap (seriously tempting with how exhausted I am most days) but she came in cheerful as always and spent almost an hour chatting with us. I had a list of questions, which she joked was not unusual. My first question was about my scans. As she pulled them up, I expressed my concerns with progression, why I felt it may be happening and mentioned my tumor markers.

Aside from slight progression in my right neck lymph node and 2 areas of my spine, my scans are stable. Stable! This is such wonderful news!

My right neck lymph nodes showed some activity but it was considered minimal. My spine had some interesting activity that was indicated as stable but not listed on my report from December. My left iliac crest (pelvic bone) is not distinguishable on the exam – that’s right they couldn’t see it! – and my right iliac crest was stable. My lung and liver are clear, though I do have pleural effusion yet again on my right lung. It is already of moderate size and is indicated as also partially against my back, which explains the pretty bad pain that I have.

We talked for a while and she talked to me about the possibility of taking Xeloda again but this time combining it with the Afinitor. This is an interesting suggestion and not something that we have pursued. Aside from the pleural effusion, I had a good amount of stability with Xeloda. So perhaps combining it with Afinitor will help eliminate this cancer.

After I left, I headed to my appointment with the radiation oncologist. While waiting in the room, my oncologist called and talked to me more about Xeloda. We discussed side effects of before, that there aren’t a lot of studies about doing it and what it would potentially mean for my cancer. We decided it will be worth trying to see how I tolerate it and how I feel after the first week or two. This should be interesting…

My meeting with the radiation oncologist was good. My radiation wound is not yet fully healed, though it is slowly, ever so slowly, getting smaller. We discussed having the tissue expanders removed and she wanted to talk to the plastic surgeon about it to understand the logistics of that surgery. More to come on that.

So, though today was incredibly tiring, involved a lot of conversations, questions & learning and started early while ending late…it was a good day. A really, really good day. Stable. Ahhh, yes.